STRONG FOUNDATIONS: TWELVE PRINCIPLES FOR EFFECTIVE GENERAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS

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1 1 STRONG FOUNDATIONS: TWELVE PRINCIPLES FOR EFFECTIVE GENERAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS Prepared by Participants in the Project on Strong Foundations for General Education THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN COLLEGES 1994 PROLOGUE: THE REVIVAL OF GENERAL EDUCATION Jerry G. Gaff Vice President and Director Project on Strong Foundations for General Education Association of American Colleges A broad general education for undergraduate students is an ideal that has guided American colleges and universities since their inception. The earliest colleges offered a uniform classical education, and that tradition continued until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The growth of science, the expansion and subdivision of knowledge, the development of academic disciplines, and the need for specialized workers these and other factors cracked the uniformity and gave rise to depth of study in a specialization as a different ideal. Since then, the ideals of breadth and depth, together, have been regarded as the defining elements of quality in baccalaureate education. In his study of the history of the undergraduate curriculum, Frederick Rudolph analyzed the tension between these competing ideals. He concluded (1977, 253): Concentration was the bread and butter of the vast majority of professors, the style they knew and approved, the measure of departmental strength and popularity. Breadth, distribution, and general education were the hobby horses of new presidents, ambitious deans, and well-meaning humanists of the sort who were elected to curriculum committees as a gesture of token support for the idea of liberal learning. When that gesture collided with the interests of the department and the major field, only occasionally did the general prevail over the special. Because colleges and universities are organized around academic disciplines and departments, including professional and career fields, these special interests tend to overshadow the general education of students. That is why, for the third time this century, we are again experiencing a revival of general education. As after World Wars I and II, the purpose of today s revival is to assure that all students, regardless of academic major or intended career, receive a broad general education rooted in the liberal arts and sciences. The term general education used throughout this monograph admits of no simple or single definition. A heuristic one offered by an earlier report (Task Group on General Education, 1988, 1) is the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that all of us use and live by during most of our lives whether as parents, citizens, lovers, travelers, participants in the arts, leaders, volunteers, or good Samaritans. While avoiding advocacy of any particular content, this

2 2 definition has the advantage of inviting individuals into a conversation, so that a group, such as a college faculty, can determine what are the essential knowledge, skills, and attitudes for students to acquire. If agreement can be reached, then the group can assess the adequacy of a curriculum to cultivate such qualities, or devise a curriculum that would more intentionally nurture those attributes. Such a conversation about the ends of education takes place today in a climate of serious public concern about the quality of education. The concern centers on the curriculum at least at the college level because the debate focuses on what students should know. The concern is not primarily about students being competent specialists in biology, philosophy, or sociology, for instance. It is that students do not possess the marks of a generally educated person that is, having such qualities as a broad base of knowledge in history and culture, mathematics and science, the ability to think logically and critically, the capacity to express ideas clearly and cogently, the sensitivities and interests, and the capability to work independently and collaboratively. A New Concept Indeed, a new concept of general education seems to be emerging at a large number of institutions that have analyzed undergraduate education. The old idea equated general education with breadth and, in an institution organized around academic departments, involved a sampling of courses from the broad array of academic disciplines. The method of securing breadth was by means of distribution requirements, and students were typically given a great deal of latitude to choose among alternative courses within broad domains of knowledge, such as the humanities, social, and natural sciences. Usually all courses designated by a department, typically introductory or lower level ones, met the requirements. These courses were regarded as a foundation on which specialized study would build. Such a program required little administrative coordination, simply a registrar to verify that requirements were met. Faculty members tended to view teaching such course as service to students who were concentrating in other fields, and students were advised to get your distribution requirements out of the way, so you can get on with more important work in your major. Each of these elements is part of an old, and increasingly discredited, way of thinking about general education. A new concept is emerging from conversations among faculties about the qualities of an educated person and the redesign of their curricula. One after another, college faculties are concluding that general education must be much more than breadth and simple exposure to different fields of study. Collectively, they are deciding that students should: Receive a generous orientation to the intellectual expectations, curricular rationale, and learning resources of the institution; Acquire specific skills of thought and expression, such as critical thinking and writing, that should be learned across the curriculum and imbedded within several courses; Learn about another culture and the diversity that exists within our own culture in terms of gender, race, ethnic, background, class, age, and religion; Integrate ideas from across disciplines to illuminate interdisciplinary themes, issues, or social problems; Study some subjects beyond the majors at advanced, not just introductory levels; Have an opportunity near the end of their course of study to pull together their learning in a senior seminar or project; and,

3 3 Experience a coherent course of study, one that is more than the sum of its parts. Surely, study of various disciplines is important, but this increasingly is seen as a minimalist definition that is not sufficiently rigorous for the demands that students will face in their lifetimes. A more robust concept is full of educational purposes beyond that of breadth. A loose distribution system, which maximizes student choice within broad categories, is inadequate to guarantee that all students acquire this kind of education. Some prescription, whether specific graduation requirements or guidelines for certain kinds of courses (such as writing intensive ), is necessary. Courses offered by departments must be reviewed by institution-wide committees to assure that they meet specified educational criteria. A great deal of coordination among departments, faculty members, and students is necessary to foster coherence. That is why many institutions with reformed general education curricula create new administrative positions; a director of general education is needed to see that purposes are addressed and coherence is achieved. Rather than seeing such intentional courses as demeaning service, faculty members tend to view them as special opportunities to teach the most fundamental ideas, methods, and perspectives of their disciplines to students who may never take another course in the field. Such important courses obviously cannot be gotten out of the way ; they are essential to the educational enterprise. And a more useful metaphor that a foundation is that of a scaffolding, a structure that exists alongside a major and provides a context and framework for erecting that edifice. This new concept is a richer, more purposeful, and more demanding concept of general education. Although many of the educational purposes can and should be addressed in academic majors, this new concept gives far more substance and authority to general education. It demands a better balance with the major. A Brief History The current curriculum debate was launched as long ago as 1977 with the confluence of three disparate events. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (1977) published a book that declared general education a disaster area. The U.S. Commissioner of Education and his assistant (Boyer and Kaplan, 1977) called for a common core curriculum as a way to focus on critical issues central to al members of the society. And the Task Force on the Core Curriculum (1977) presented Harvard College with a proposal to overhaul its general education program. Each of the events was trumpeted by the media, reinforced each other, and highlighted the need for improvements in the general education curriculum. They kicked off what has become a veritable movement to reform general education. By the late 1980 s, survey (El- Khawas, 1987, 1988) reported that virtually all colleges and universities has received the general education programs, and large numbers had made revisions in them. Three Questions the movement unfolded in phases that can be sketched by looking at the successive questions that have been raised. The first question was, what is wrong with general education? Boyer and Levine (1981, 3) declared that general education is the spare room of academia with no one responsible for it oversight and everyone permitted to use it as he will. They argued that it will never be a strong and vital part of collegiate study until it has a recognized purpose of its own. William Bennett (1984) and E.D. Hirsch (1987) provided a different type of response by

4 4 lamenting that many students graduated without studying important areas of learning, resulting in a lack of what the latter called cultural literacy. The lacks cited by these and others are as diverse as a history and literature, science, technology, and mathematics, and writing and computing. College campuses had their own answers to the question, as can be seen from the sixty diverse institutions that in 1978 applied to participate in a project I was directing, General Education Models. The project was designed to bring together a group of colleges and universities to strengthen their general education curricula. Applicants were asked to describe the problems with their current programs, which were almost entirely loose distribution systems. The groups noted five sets of problems. 1. Their curricula lacked an educational philosophy and were based essentially on political compromises. 2. Their programs were fragmented and described as a smorgasbord or a Chinese dinner menu. 3. Students were lacking in interest, motivation, and skills to master traditional liberal arts subject matter and did not see the utility of the material to their careers. 4. The faculty had little interest in teaching non-majors or connecting their content with other fields, and the quality of teaching in general education was a concern. 5. The decentralization of responsibility for general education to twenty, thirty, or forty more or less autonomous departments meant, in the words of one, no single body [is] responsible for the development, supervision, or evaluation of general education. Of course, this is a perfect prescription for a fragmented curriculum without an educational rationale. A second question was asked, What is to be done? Of course, a wide variety of answers was offered, many in the form of so-called national reports. Speaking on behalf of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bennett (1984) proposed study in six humanistic fields. The Association of American Colleges (1985) called for the establishment of a minimum required curriculum and spelled out nine components. AAC also challenged academic administrators to revive the responsibility of the faculty as a whole for the curriculum as a whole. The Study Group of the National Institute on Education (1984) recommended that all students should have two full years of liberal education and that more resources should be shifted to the first two years of college. Their major thrust was not toward any particular content but, rather, toward involving students in whatever content they may be studying. Lynn Cheney (1989) favored distributing fifty semester credit hours of study across several subjects: one semester on the origins of civilization, two one-semester courses on other civilizations, two years of foreign language, one year of mathematics, one year of laboratory science, and one year of social science. AAC s Task Group (1988) analyzed some of the most difficulty issues in implementing strong general education programs and made a series of recommendations about planning, teaching, and organizing support for general education. These last two works were filled with institutional examples of good practice; a sign of the progress being made in elevating the idea that practice of general education on the nation s campus. In the words of the latter:

5 5 We sense lively debate and invigorated practice at those institutions in which faculty are willing to engage in the necessarily prolonged analyses and experimentation in general education courses and programs. (p.57) Another question arose, after over a decade of debate and reform: What are the consequences of the curriculum changes? This question has not been fully answered, although various reports from individual campuses and a few research studies have been completed. Most of these have focused on curricular components, and the early evidence suggests that: Freshman seminars tend to be popular with students and faculty, and they seem to foster higher achievement, greater satisfaction, and better retention rates (Fidler and Hunter, 1989). Writing across the curriculum has been one of the most successful and influential themes of reform. It has touched nearly all campuses, as thousands of professors in all fields are teaching writing in their courses. Courses and sequences dealing with international culture and cultural diversity domestically are increasing. After sixty-three institutions developed new courses and instructional materials in the Engaging Cultural Legacies Project, AAC assembled sixty more to work on development of courses dealing with domestic diversity in its current American Commitments Project. There is some evidence that courses help students learn how to think, talk, and deal interpersonally with issues of diversity (Musil, 1992). My own (1991) study of the early outcomes of changes in general education suggested that they not only led to increased quality and coherence, but they also had a positive impact on other parts of the institution. For example, over 65 percent of the institutions reported a positive impact on the sense of community, the renewal of faculty, and the identity of the institution. For those which reported making a large change in the curriculum, over 80 percent cited these benefits. Obviously, more systematic study is needed regarding the outcomes of curricular changes, but the evidence is starting to document the benefits of more rigorous study. The New Question These first three questions remain very much with us. Indeed, new analyses of the problems (Anderson, 1992; Camochan, 1993), new suggestions for improvement (Schneider, in press), and new reports of consequences (Tinto, Goodsell-Love, and Russo, 1993) continue to appear with regularity. Similarly, new institutions commence curriculum reviews, significant new curricula continue to be approved, and institutions having made modest changes continue to work for more substantial change. But, among this ferment of activity, a new question is pressing for attention. With large numbers of colleges and universities having made significant investments of time and money to design and implement new general education programs, they are concerned with maintaining their momentum. How to sustain vitality in strong general education programs? is a question that is asked by increasing numbers of individuals. Answers to this question are vital if we are to reap the rewards of the substantial progress that has been made in many institutions. Without clear answers and action based on them today s innovations are in jeopardy. If we go back to business as usual, if we fail to nurture strong general education programs, we will repeat the same unfortunate and wasteful historical cycle that sees general education wither

6 until another revival is needed. To answer the question of sustaining vitality, AAC organized the Project on Strong Foundations for General Education, with support from the Lilly Endowment. From among 116 applicants, seventeen diverse institutions were selected to develop answers to the question. The institutions operated very different general education programs, and while all continued to work on improvements, they were quite eager to sustain the progress (typically quite substantial) that had been made. Campus leaders met periodically for two years to share experiences and insights. The document that follows is a genuinely collaborative writing project that represents the group s best thinking about how to answer the emerging new question. When we initially thought about writing this report, participants considered describing their own programs, because, collectively, they are at the forefront of the reform movement. They considered highlighting the most distinctive aspects of their curricula and noting variations in approaches taken at different institutions. But they decided against that, partly because these curricula seemed to be institution-specific and not what they, in good conscience, could universally recommend to others. Eventually they came to believe that those curricular components are not really the most important things to speak about. Rather, they decided that the specific structure and content of their programs were less important than the underlying principles on which they are built. Like the iceberg, program features are visible, but the most fundamental features of strong general education programs are the invisible principles that lurk beneath the surface. They set for themselves, then, the very ambitious undertaking of ascertaining just what those basic principles really are that make a vibrant program and sustain its vitality. That led to a great deal of collective soul-searching. Everyone had to reflect on their experiences, think hard thoughts, hold cherished beliefs up to criticism, and share their stories both good and bad with each other. They critiqued their best ideas, clarified their thinking, and tried again and again to express their most basic thoughts. Eventually the group settled on twelve principles. It is not that there are exactly that many, but that was the number that captured the most important things they agreed on, given the basis of their experiences in seventeen very different institutions and programs. Readers will notice some overlap among the principles, but each represents a way of thinking, or a lever that can be pushed or pulled, to effect institutional change. Following the path recommended in this volume will almost assuredly require institutional change. This is because, as we have noted, most colleges and universities are not organized to make the general education of undergraduate students a top priority. Starting with the general education curriculum, the group soon saw the need to examine all aspects of the academic culture and organization for ways each office or unit facilitates or impedes learning in the formal curriculum. The admissions office, student advising, the norms of student life, faculty hiring, the reward system, budgeting priorities, fund raising: these and everything else that happens on a campus can provide positive support for general education or can undercut it. Of course, this approach means that no single institution can stop nurturing its general education program. No place has reached general education Nirvana; none has a perfect program; each must continue to refine its own program. As soon as institutional attention wanders, the curriculum may start falling apart. It may become less coherent; students may not see the point of certain requirements; required courses may be routinely taught and receive poor evaluations from students. Also with inattention, parts of the institution may stop providing positive support for the 6

7 7 curriculum: admissions officers may revert to simply recruiting bodies rather than explaining institutional expectations and the rationale behind the curriculum; student life may succumb to inherent anti-intellectual tendencies; faculty may be hired with little regard to their teaching of non-majors; the reward structure may discourage faculty members from teaching general education courses; and so on. These are all danger signs. Our prescription is not an easy one. Hard and persistent work is needed to sustain quality and coherence in a curriculum. As any academic leader knows, getting faculty members to pull together s a bit like herding cats. Good teachers know they face a constant challenge to involve students actively in their own learning. Breaking down bureaucratic walls and corralling the various institutional forces so they can move together to support general education is a constant struggle. But the virtues of this particular twelve-step program are two: it is brutally honest, and it is most helpful to others seeking to strengthen the general education of students and to sustain those vital programs. Like other twelve-step programs, this is a form of tough love for colleges and universities. If students are to receive a high standard of quality in baccalaureate education that includes both a strong general education and a specialization, institutions will have to change some of their habits. Both of these ideals can co-exist within the same institutions but not unless general education is truly values and strongly supported by institutional policies and practices. The contributions of all of the individuals involved in preparing the following report including my own have been transformed as a result of our involvement in a collective enterprise. Extending thanks to specific people would be both imprecise and inappropriate for such a group effort. Since the beginning, however, participants in the Project on Strong Foundations have been animated by the sense that we were collaborating on an important task. In the end, we created not just an essay but also friendships, mutual respect, refined understanding in short, a genuine community of scholars. I want to express my profound appreciation to each of my colleagues for al that we were able to create together. PARTICIPANTS IN THE PROJECT ON STRONG FOUNDATIONS FOR GENERAL EDUCATION Arizona State University Ball State University The College of St. Scholastica Grand Valley State University Jackson State University Miami University Minnesota Community Colleges Roanoke College St. Joseph s College San Jose State University Southeast Missouri State University Susquehanna University Union College

8 8 University of Hartford University of Idaho University of Maryland University of Minnesota-Morris INTRODUCTION In a remarkable burst of energy, many American colleges and universities have examined, debated, and revised their general education programs over the last decade. Much ahs been written about the need to reform general education and about what well constructed general education programs should look like, what content they should include, what skills they should cultivate, and how they ought to be taught. It is not our intent to duplicate this work, although we will refer to the best of it from time to time. This monograph is a guide to campus leaders interested in providing strong institutional foundations for general education programs. Given the enormous investment of time and resources spent in developing new approaches to general education, we are interested in identifying implementation strategies that ensure continuing program strength. At the invitation of the Association of American Colleges, we began with our own experience as practitioners faculty members and academic administrators who labor day-to-day in the trenches. We reflected on our experience at seventeen diverse institution representing the many dimensions of American higher education, and we attempted to answer three questions about program implementation: (1) What characteristics do successful programs share? (2) What common strategies do they employ to secure their sustained vitality? (3) What common problems do they experience? In moving toward our answers, we proceed inductively to develop a list of principles and to illustrate them with specific examples. The examples are drawn from our seventeen programs and others with which we are acquainted. In the language of the current quality movement, our principles represent benchmarks for gauging program effectiveness and should be applicable to a variety of institutions. We hope that the fruit of this process is a useful framework for any institution to analyze and guide its continuous action to provide an effective, broad general education for all students. Simply stated, our answer to the questions about strong foundations for general education is contained in one overarching meta-principle: A strong general education program articulates a compelling vision and forms an evolving community based on that vision. Twelve interrelated principles explicate what is basic to implementing and sustaining strong general education programs. PART I: ARTICULATING A COMPELLING VISION FOR GENERAL EDUCATION

9 9 Principle #1: Strong general education programs explicitly answer the question, What is the point of General Education? What is the ruling idea or common aim which a general education program intends to realize? What is the point of general education at a particular institution? These are the most important questions which we think have to be addressed and answered by academic communities if their general education programs are to be built on strong foundations. The issue is a philosophical one: general education programs are intellectual projects. They ought to be based on a coherent rationale. For example: How does general education function in the undergraduate program? How is its role different fro the role of the major or the role of free electives? What is the relation between general education and the specialized education of the major? What is general education preparing students for? Such questions need to be asked and answered up front in curriculum design and implementation. The insight which underlies the Strong Foundations project is that the single most important thing that colleges and universities need to do to ensure the long-term viability of their general education reforms is to keep clearly in mind what the point of general education is. Moreover, our initial concern centers on why we teach whatever we teach, however we teach it. What is the purpose of our general education program and the role of our course within it? Until we know why general education is important, we do not clearly know what we should teach or how we should teach it. The authors of General Education in a Free Society (1945), offer a similar observation: just as the courses in a major ought to be related to one another and ought to be ordered in relation to some center, so should we envisage general education as an organic whole whose parts join in expounding a ruling idea and in serving a common aim (p. 57). As academic leaders at Harvard University discovered nearly five decades ago, when their faculty colleagues rejected their recommendations, achieving such a state of affairs is as difficult as it is important. At one institution, general education may be viewed as the arch major,, the place where specialized analyses of the various disciplines are synthesized into some whole. At another, the focus may be on human beings as meaning-makers. In such a context, various disciplines may be seen as offering different perspectives of how humans construct meaning. General education, here, would be at the center of a curriculum where human experience in its totality is examined. Many institutions articulate the point of their general education programs in terms of balance, most often between breadth and depth. At another institution, the point of general education may be to provide a corrective to the careerism of many students. John Nichols, Coordinator of the Core Curriculum at St. Joseph s College, states that, if the major aims mostly to help students make a living then general education is concerned with how to make a life or how to make a self worth being. Boyer and Levine (1981) studied the purposes proposed in each of this century s three revivals of general education. They found fifty different justifications some of them contradictory. Yet, they observed that the purposes of general education could be divided roughly into two groups: those that promote social integration and those that combat social disintegration. In the midst of this most recent revival, we have come to believe that strong general education programs share some common goals relating to preparation for citizenship in a democratic society. We believe that it is the task of general education to prepare students to:

10 10 1. understand and deal constructively with the diversity of the contemporary world, a diversity manifested not only in ideas and ways of knowing but also in populations and cultures; 2. construct a coherent framework for ongoing intellectual, ethical, and aesthetic growth in the presence of such diversity; and, 3. develop lifelong competencies such as critical and creative thinking, written and oral communication, quantitative reasoning, and problem solving. Different institutions appropriately emphasize different aspects of preparation for citizenship in articulating the point of general education. Some would fit the Boyer and Levine typology in emphasizing integration and continuity. Others offer what might be seen as a more radical interpretation of preparation for citizenship focused on self-awareness, self-identity, and change. At the same time we think that these common purposes of general education programs contribute mightily to the pursuit of a vocation and to the economic competitiveness of the nation. Modern work increasingly is knowledge intensive. To the extent that general education equips students with a broad base of knowledge, an intellectual framework for dealing with the unknown, and the skills of thought and expression, it promotes the practical side of life in work, home, and community. We believe that it is difficult to implement successfully a general education program when an institution does not have a vision as an operational guide to its instructional programs. Educational vision prevents what Cohen and March (1974) called organized anarchy. That is to say, vision provides the basic rationale and driving force for an operational program. Miami University, a state-assisted institution in Ohio, sees its program as preparing students not only to live in a rapidly changing world, but also to participate actively in this transformation. Extensively studied, debated, and approved by the faculty, Miami s Statement of Principles of Liberal Education (1989, 10) provides the bedrock on which its new universitywide liberal education programs rests: The diverse educational communities of a comprehensive university have a common interest in liberal learning: it nurtures capabilities for creatively transforming human culture and complements specialized work by enlarging one s personal and vocational pathways. Liberal learning involves thinking critically, understanding contexts, engaging with other learners, reflecting and acting, habits that extend liberal learning through a lifetime to benefit both the individual and society. Howard University, a historically black institution in Washington, D.C., highlights individual identity in articulating the point of its curriculum, noting: Sureness about one s identity strengthens one s courage to live and to triumph in a hostile or indifferent world. Its version of preparing students for citizenship states: Graduates of the College will need to rewrite many of the premises of that world probably for some time to come and will need to join in carrying this understanding from the campus to the community. Today s cultural mainstream has emerged from the confrontations and assimilation of varied peoples; it is not the creation of a single racial or cultural group. In the same way, the future mainstream will be enriched and redirected by today s plurality. By understanding the past and seeing the present through the lenses of their own experiences, the College s graduates can fashion a more just and equitable future for themselves, their people, all people.

11 11 Howard s instructional program emphasizes the development of identity especially among its African-American students. Strong programs reflect the central educational values and commitments of the institution. Absence of clarity about the point, the inclusion of too many purposes, or too many compromises in the design of programs, make effective implementation difficult. Gaps between the rhetoric of program goals and their implementation are inevitable, but when these gaps are too wide, there is no compelling answer to a question about the point of general education. Clarity of vision at each decision juncture in the implementation of a curriculum increases the chances that a general education program and its courses will remain true to their original intentions over the passage of time. Consistent reiteration of a clear common vision may counter strong centrifugal pressures from programs in majors and professional fields. In a time of serious budgetary constraints as we have today, such clarity contributes to program success. Principle #2: Strong General Education Programs Embody Institutional Mission This principle speaks to two common problems. First, the traditional missions of many institutions are challenged today by competitive market conditions and by economic pressures. Second, missions often are not expressed explicitly in instructional programs. For example, a general education curriculum consisting of loose distribution requirements the most common structure may assure a degree of breadth for students, but it may not reflect the distinctive mission of the institution. A living and vibrant educational vision must be solidly grounded in an institution s mission its sense of public purpose, its history and tradition, the character of its students, its geographical setting, or its religious affiliation. When there is uncertainty among faculty members, administrators, and other constituencies regarding mission, the general education curriculum cannot embody a compelling vision. The questions of Who are we? and What is it we must do? need to be answered before a coherent general education program can be put in place. The answers must be repeatedly restated to sustain vitality in the curriculum. WHAT S IN A NAME? St. Joseph s College and San Jose State University (SJSU) may share a common namesake, but their general education programs serve very different populations of students and are embedded in very different institutional setting with different missions. SJSU is an urban, public university whose students are predominantly commuters, frequently attend part-time, and usually work. No single ethnic group predominates on this campus, with its diverse student body of Euro-American, Asian, Hispanic, and African- American students. Two-thirds of the students transfer from other colleges where they complete more than 75 percent of their state-mandated general education requirements. St. Joseph s in rural Rensselaer, Indiana, is a Catholic liberal arts institution with close to 1100 students, mostly residential, of traditional college age, and of limited racial and ethnic diversity. General education requirements at St. Joseph s are all incorporated into a forty-five-credit, eight semester common Core Curriculum. The semester segments of this Core are each teamtaught by an interdisciplinary group of faculty, and every one of the segments is required of all students for graduation. The Core constitutes a genuinely single program of general education, then, for all students, and it possesses its own rationale which starts in the first year, ends with a

12 12 capstone in the senior year and moves from the one to the other in clearly defined steps. To serve its diverse population and programs, SJSU has adopted a two-tiered distributive model. More than 150 certified courses meet strict criteria, require significant writing, and address issues of race, class, and gender where possible. A thirty-nine-unit foundation includes most traditional breadth and skills areas and articulates directly with two statewide transfer programs and individual courses; but all students, transfers and natives, must complete an integrated twelve-unit program of advanced, interdisciplinary, issue-oriented courses in residence. By giving flexibility in the lower division requirements, SJSU makes a unique, coherent contribution to the liberal arts education of all its graduates, while honoring a wide variety of previous educational programs. Paradoxically, the curriculum reform process itself can result in a sharpening or alteration of the mission, identity, and image of an institution, as constituents ask, What is special about our students, our institution, our education? This process of questioning and answering must be repeated for each new generation of faculty and students and these new faculty and students, in turn, will have an impact on the mission. Consider the liberal arts colleges which have faced more competitive markets for prospective students as well as increasing costs and rising tuition. Many have drifted from their original missions by creating an array of professional and vocational programs. There is nothing wrong with such programs, and these colleges have moved with surprising speed to respond to perceived market demands. But some of these institutions still use the rhetoric of liberal education in describing their programs when, in fact, most students are in career studies tracks. A strong commitment to general education, even in career fields, could continue to be emphasized, consistent with their original missions, but many have not chosen to do so. The following is an example of one that has. The College of St. Scholastica, a private Benedictine institution, located in Duluth, Minnesota, describes integration and balance as the point of its general education program. Here integration and balance grow out of the traditions of the Order of St. Benedict. Each Benedictine community is committed to serving the people in its region and to developing the whole person. With a student body heavily enrolled in professional fields, its program focuses on the integration of skills and content within the liberal arts and sciences as well as the integration of liberal and professional education. A number of colleges have dramatically expanded their programs to serve an older nontraditional adult population. Again, this appears to be impressive and warranted entrepreneurship, except that some institutions have abandoned their own educational principles in such a move. For example, one well-respected women s college added a successful weekend college, but waived all but one of its requirements, in order to be attractive to the new clientele. Another college developed a truly remarkable new core curriculum for its traditional students, but continues to operate a number of centers around the state for nontraditional students with a radically different set of requirements. When mission statements only minimally correspond to current programs, they provide minimal guidance in establishing instructional priorities. The consequent uncertainty about institutional character more often than not plays out in the full range of discussions about curriculum. In such contexts, coherent and focused general education programs are rarely found. We know of no strong general education program in an institution that has not seriously engaged the question of distinctive mission. Other liberal arts colleges are trying to articulate ways in which they are distinctive: a

13 13 research college, a public ivy, an avowedly Christian college, a one of the top ten, or a special campus ethos with small classes, individual attention and sense of community. Such definition has curricular implications. In designating itself as the personal college, Dowling College on Long Island in New York wished to stake out a place that distinguished its programs from near-neighbor SUNY at Stony Brook. At the personal college students don t expect to stand in long lines, sit in large classes, and be unknown to their faculty. The implications for curriculum and pedagogy are quite clear. Hampshire s commitment to inquiry and activism permeate its curriculum, as does Berea s commitment to work as a central component of the daily life of its primarily Appalachian, working-class student body. Missions have been the focus of public scrutiny and criticism at many state-assisted research universities. Historically they have had a mandate to conduct cutting edge scholarship, to offer graduate education in a wide array of fields, to serve their communities, and to provide baccalaureate education to undergraduate students. At this time, the public is calling for greater emphasis on undergraduate education. Many leading universities confront a real dilemma in responding to this new pressure to give increased attention to undergraduate education, to strengthen general education by raising its place among institutional priorities. During times of constricting resources, to raise one priority mean lowering another. Consider the following examples: -In the wake of several very substantial budget cuts and a faculty report urging more emphasis on teaching undergraduates, the President of the University of Maryland College Park, proposed that all entering students enroll in small freshman seminars. Such a costly new venture, subsequently adopted, was designed to create a particular niche for the University and retain an edge for this flagship institution in competing for the most capable high school graduates from the state. -Arizona State University, a complex university with 48,000 students, renounced the old pattern that gave curricular autonomy to each of its separate colleges to establish a university-wide General Studies program. To oversee its implementation, it created a University General Studies Council to approve and evaluate courses. Toni-Marie Montgomery, Chair of that Council, declares, To have a comprehensive General Studies program at a large research university comprised of thirteen fiercely independent colleges is a triumph in itself. Rather than having a small General Studies core, we have an extensive menu of courses from which students may choose. A narrow core program was simply not politically feasible, and the extensive list of courses has other practical advantages. The impact of the General Studies program on resources was diffused across the university; it was possible to implement the program all at once using existing courses; and almost immediately the program was deeply imbedded in the university curriculum. Moreover, a broad program allows students the flexibility they need to work out complex programs of study involving university, college, and major requirements. Missions of comprehensive colleges and universities are necessarily complex and multilayered. This complexity often reflects the history of changing roles and character of these institutions. Jackson State University is a classic example. Its mission statement details the

14 14 history of its development as well as its aspirations for the future. Once an institution manages to clarify its mission and devise a vision for its course of study, it needs to make sure that they are carried out not just in the curriculum but also in other key functions. Leadership, strategic planning, faculty appointments, awards ceremonies, budgeting these are all ways to link mission and vision to a vital general education curriculum. The University of Idaho has incorporated specific goals and activities for general education in its recently published strategic plan. Idaho s Provost has articulated the need for broadly educated professionals in agriculture, forestry, and other professional fields. The University of Utah uses the yearly appointment of a Distinguished University Professor to communicate the importance of its General Education Program throughout the institution. At Ball State University, the Lawhead Teaching Award in General Studies is awarded yearly to acknowledge the work of an outstanding faculty member teaching in General Studies. The award of $1,000 carries with it a dinner, a plaque, and recognition at the fall faculty meeting. Principle #3: Strong General Education Programs Continuously Strive for Educational Coherence It is the task of general education to introduce students to the breadth of knowledge and also to the lifelong project of making sense and creating coherence out of the variety. This task involves cultivating the highest of critical thinking skills, what John Henry (Cardinal) Newman (1873) called the integrative habit of mind. Undergraduate education often strikes students as a bewildering introduction into diversity: different bodies of knowledge, modes of inquiry, ways of knowing, voices, historical periods, and cultures. This centrifugal exposure to diversity is an essential component of the point of general education (Principle #1). And yet an equally essential component of general education is the counterbalancing centripetal pursuit of coherence. Thus, general education starts with diversity but aims at coherence. The coherence that counts is that which students and faculty members experience in day-today, week-to-week, semester-to-semester, and whole-four years of general education. All too often students experience the curriculum as fragmented. Separate courses and academic disciplines typically stress particular content and approaches rather than searching for commonalities or making connections between fields. Students are often left adrift in their search for meaning or enlightening connections. Seeking the connectedness of things, as Mark Van Doren put it, is a defining goal of strong programs of general education. This deliberate attention to finding and making connections must extend from program design to the many daily details of program implementation. Coherence: Means to Achieve It 1. Content: One way to pursue coherence is through content, and several avenues exist. If all students study exactly the same core courses, as they do at places as diverse as St. John s

15 15 (Annapolis) and Brooklyn College, they have an opportunity for integration. Although few institutions are willing to structure the entire general education curriculum that tightly, many have what Zelda Gamson calls a modified core featuring common learning in the form of a first year seminar, a specified course, or a sequence of courses in the humanities or sciences. In addition to fostering the integrative habit of mind within these courses, this approach has another advantage. Instructors in other courses can refer their own work to common material which students study in the core, thus fostering connected learning beyond the core courses. Interdisciplinary courses represent another approach; they express the interconnectedness of knowledge by presenting multiple perspectives on issues, concepts, texts, or real world problems. The All-University Curriculum at the University of Hartford utilizes this approach. For example, its course entitled Hunger: Problems of Scarcity and Choice integrates biology, philosophy, economics, and sociology in a problem-centered focus. Senior capstone seminars or projects are another means for achieving integration through content of general education. At Roanoke College, seniors cap their core experience with an interdisciplinary seminar called Senior Symposium. The course aims to give students an opportunity to integrate materials and skills from the general education program and from their majors as they explore a topic of universal significance. Studying with a faculty member outside their discipline, students are challenged to experience the variety of skills and perspectives that students from different majors bring to a common question. Recent topics have included: Scientific Fact and the Art of Knowing; Who Am I: The Quest for Self; The Quest for Justice; and Prospects for Future Change. At the College of St. Scholastica, one criterion for approving a senior seminar topic that the topic attends explicitly to the integration of liberal education and professional training. Ethics in the Professions : or Meaningful Work are examples of such integrative topics. 2. Skills: A second way to foster coherence emphasizes the acquisition of certain intellectual and communication skills. For example, nearly all general education programs explicitly recognize the need for students to listen accurately, to speak articulately and persuasively, to read analytically and critically, and to write well. Targeting the development of cognitive skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and quantitative reasoning is also frequent. Achieving coherence through this strategy requires a shared understanding of the specific competence, respect for the various ways a particular skill is expressed in different fields, appreciation of the contributions of various disciplines to skill enhancement, and commitment to a program-wide strategy to achieve enhancement of skills. This is a demanding set of conditions, but any less, and coherence may be lost in its implementation. The Freshman Preceptorial, required of all new students at Union College, stresses analytical reading and writing in multiple disciplines. Meeting in sections of no more than fifteen, the students read and discuss a number of significant texts. They write four essays on these texts (which are rewritten after peer or professional consultation) and a final paper. The teachers are drawn from all departments of the college and thus provide an interdisciplinary approach in the creation of the reading list as well as in the discussions at the weekly meetings of the preceptors.